Haunted Scotland Read online

  HAUNTED SCOTLAND

  This eBook edition published in 2012 by Birlinn Limited West Newington House Newington Road Edinburgh

  EH9 1QS

  www.birlinn.co.uk

  Copyright © Roddy Martine 2010

  The moral right of Roddy Martine to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN: 978-1-84158-740-0

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-85790-490-4

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  For Nick and Tania

  And in memory of Swein MacDonald,

  The Highland Seer (1931–2003)

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  1 Shadows from the Past

  2 Stone Tapes

  3 Second Sight

  4 An Awakening

  5 Multiple Occupancy

  6 Unexpected Visitors

  7 The People Upstairs

  8 To Triumph in Glory with the Lamb

  9 Hell and Purgatory

  10 For Those in Peril on the Sea

  11 Visions from the Past

  12 A State of Grace

  13 The Stuff that Dreams Are Made Of

  14 Castles in the Air

  15 Keeping it in the Family

  16 Warlocks and Witches

  17 The Landscape over the Fireplace

  18 The Cold Hearth

  19 The Great Hector

  20 The Dark Lord

  21 Distilled Spirits

  22 The Sleeping Beauty

  23 Omens and Curses

  24 Palimpsest

  Bibliography

  Index

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The author would like to thank the following for their invaluable help and advice: Alison Campbell, Ronnie Cox, Elizabeth Fenton-Barnes, Ian Fraser, The Reverend Dr Richard Frazer, Graham Hopner, Martin Hunt, Ewan Irvine, Christopher James, Malcolm and Avril Kirk, Jim and Mary Lamb, Ian Logan, Colin Lindsay McDougal, Alison Milne, Fraser Morrison, Lady Norreys, Luisa Ramazzotti, Paul and Louise Ramsay, John and Carol Steel, Andrew and Helen Murray Thriepland, Jennifer Washington, Gail Young.

  My thanks in particular to Hugh Andrew, Andrew Simmons and Kenny Redpath of Birlinn; to Helen Bleck for so methodically copy-editing the text, and, of course, to my agent, John Beaton.

  INTRODUCTION

  ‘We Scotch stand . . . highest among nations in the matter of grimly illustrating death.’

  Robert Louis Stevenson,

  Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes (1879)

  The writing of Supernatural Scotland, my first venture into the realms of the spiritual and paranormal, was an immensely stimulating personal epiphany. Although I had always been intrigued by tales of the inexplicable, I have usually balanced my interest with a healthy dollop of scepticism. Not so much now.

  During my research I encountered so many intriguing situations, and so many unlikely sources, that a subconscious pattern soon started to evolve. Almost everyone I interviewed over that period had a story to tell. Two out of every five recalled occurrences that they were logically at a loss to explain and, as I talked to them, I ruthlessly hoovered up their reactions without bias. With so much material to draw upon, it soon became apparent that there was definitely something going on here.

  Yet in almost every case there was a universal nervousness as to how friends and families might react. The majority of those I talked to were anxious not to be identified. Ancient taboos and social niceties prevailed. Nobody wanted to be thought of as entirely bonkers.

  Then, once Supernatural Scotland was published, something rather peculiar began to occur. Associates whom I knew to have deep religious convictions avoided eye contact with me. Strangers started to confide in me as if they felt it safe to trust in my discretion.

  The outcome of all of this is Haunted Scotland, a compilation of the material I have accumulated over the past five years. Some of the stories have evolved through the mists of time; some of those from the present, in my opinion, are equally unsettling and, probably because of this, some of the characters concerned insisted they remain anonymous.

  In the global world of the internet, anything becomes possible. While scientists never cease to astonish us, the more answers they provide, the more questions they pose. I should ask you to bear this in mind as you absorb the contents of this book.

  ‘We shine because we are made of electricity,’ announced the New Zealand-born Professor Gerry Gilmore of Cambridge University in the course of a discussion on dark matter with the astrologer Sir Patrick Moore. This observation was made during the 666th episode of the television series The Sky at Night. What Professor Gilmore was, in fact, emphasising is that nobody really understands the translucent content of space any more than any of us can begin to comprehend the creation of the universe or the so-called Big Bang theory. Quantum physics accepts the existence of inaccessible parallel universes, but this is still a work in progress. We might like to think that there is a scientific answer for everything, but clearly, as yet, there is not. After centuries of debate, no clear understanding of vitalism, the life force explored in Mary Shelley’s epic novel Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, has been reached.

  Bewildering as this sounds, the majority of us sensibly prefer not to go there. Few of us feel comfortable with the concept of nothingness after death, and therefore many of us welcome anything that gives us some hope of an afterlife.

  Surely, our brief existence cannot be all that there is? Given the powers to understand the extent of our lives, there must be some vital purpose in the great scheme of things. For the majority, the answers lie with a belief in God the Creator, the ultimate supernatural force that fills this void. Yet many faiths, while celebrating the divine, remain uncomfortable with the paranormal. Why?

  Because simple truths are explicable and therefore easier to subscribe to. So long as planet Earth keeps turning, the death of winter is followed by the rebirth of spring. Everything physical rises out of and reverts back to the compost heap of nature. We know that for fact.

  But where does the electricity go? Where does the soul, that sense of existence which is embodied in all human beings, shelter? It would be too trite to introduce the supernatural as the obvious answer at this stage, but let us never forget that manifestations, mostly invisible to the human eye, have been around since the beginning of recorded experience.

  Nothing tangible is entirely permanent in the scope of mankind’s brief sojourn on this Earth. Global warming, sudden changes in climate temperature, tsunamis, floods, plagues, earthquakes, all natural disasters are integral to the millennial clock and chemical mix of our planet. But who or what primes that engine?

  Where does our spark of life come from? Before claiming that a god does not exist, non-believers should first attempt to imagine infinity, then explain why, how and where the universe began, and why, how and where it will end.

  The subject is altogether too vast for the average human disposition to comprehend, although it will always remain open to conjecture. Two thousand years or more into mankind’s quest for knowledge, and we are still incapable of answering the big questions. Nor are we willing to concede that which we fail to understand: the opening of a door when it was clearly locked; the sound of voices in an empty room; the time-slips of the mind.

  There are simply too many cyclical, everyday coincidences for us to be able to dismiss the unexpected as implausible. Being closer to death in their every
day pursuits, our long-ago ancestors, despite their primitive naivety, shared a far greater understanding of such phenomena, and often with a sophistication that leaves us in awe.

  They followed the sun, and the moon and the stars at night, as do the tides, the wind, and the seasons. In recognition of this, they created and raised the Callanish Stones on Lewis; the Ring of Brodgar on Orkney; Stonehenge in England; the Stone Circle of Almendres in Portugal; Vottovaara in Russia; the Konark Temple in India, and the giant stone statues on Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean. The list is as infinite as the speculation surrounding them.

  The ancients, in their wisdom, had no fear of death; instead, dying was seen only as a change of state, the transition from the physical through the release of the spirit. Accordingly, they paid homage to their ancestors and allowed them to guide them. At the risk of sounding increasingly pretentious, I believe they knew exactly what they were doing. The moment we reject such conduct as mere superstition, we surrender the possibilities. Yet miracles do happen.

  In Scotland, land of mountains and big skies, mists and rain, our cities, towns and villages subject to long nights and winter chill, it is too easy to repress the imagination for fear of becoming a laughing stock.

  Perhaps that is why the ghosts that we hear about tend generally to be associated with the violent deeds of a distant past. Scotland’s turbulent history certainly provides us with plenty of examples to draw upon, but hauntings are not exclusive to the long ago or to acts of violence. They can relate to relatively mundane incidents as immediate as yesterday. All that is required to glimpse them is a receptive mind. Centuries come and go. Our tenancy in this world is a mere blip in time. Or is it? Are we around for a lot longer than we are encouraged to think?

  As with Supernatural Scotland, many of those whom I interviewed feared public ridicule. On that basis, I had no option but to promise anonymity. However, there were others, more comfortable in their skins and less susceptible to derision, who had no such reservations. To each and every one I extend my thanks.

  1

  SHADOWS FROM THE PAST

  Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living.

  Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

  All places of antiquity harbour shadows from the past. You have only to acknowledge the relentless passing of the centuries to be aware of the doors opening and closing, and to sense those silent footsteps in the hallway. Whether we like it or not, our mortality is short and transitory. In numbers, the spirits of the departed infinitely outnumber the actuality of the living.

  However, that still does not mean that they are at our beck and call. If anything, it makes them all the more elusive, and, although paranormal investigations and ghost festivals have become globally ubiquitous, seldom do they satisfy our insatiable need to believe in an afterlife. Have a look at all of those paranormal databases listed on the internet and you cannot fail to grasp the urgency.

  To this end, or should I say beginning, the medium Ewan Irvine has been investigating paranormal phenomena throughout Britain and Ireland for over twenty years. Tall, with ink-black hair and an intense physical presence, he certainly looks the part, and when I was invited to join a group to explore a derelict Edinburgh orphanage known as the Ragged School, it was an opportunity not to be missed.

  The Ragged School is situated in Ramsay Lane in the Old Town of Edinburgh, and adjoins the Camera Obscura Outlook Tower, close to the esplanade of Edinburgh Castle. Established in 1847 by Dr Thomas Guthrie, a preacher and reformer, it began by providing food and shelter for up to forty-five of the Old Town’s most destitute children. Homeless boys were taught carpentry and how to make shoes, while girls were prepared for a suitable marriage. Dr Guthrie died in 1873, but the Ragged School continued well into the twentieth century, closing after the Second World War. Thereafter, the building lay empty and largely forgotten until the Camera Obscura, itself founded in the Victorian era, was expanded. This would be our last chance to explore the building before the renovation work began.

  Ewan Irvine has been aware of his psychic gifts since he was nineteen years old, and, having shaped his abilities as a medium with Portobello Spiritualist Church, set up Full Moon Investigations to participate in the annual Mary King’s GhostFest. Mary King, as readers of Supernatural Scotland will know, was the inhabitant of a nearby medieval street which was closed off during an outbreak of the bubonic plague during the seventeenth century. The majority of the inhabitants were, we are told, evacuated, but stories persist of those who were left behind, and it is their spirits which are said to haunt the cobbled alleyway which lies forty feet below the quadrangle of today’s City Chambers.

  There was a veiled moon above us when I joined a team from the Scottish Society of Paranormal Investigation and Analysis and Full Moon Investigations at the top of the High Street. We were a group of around twenty, equipped with torches, cameras, tape recorders, and first-aid kits. Dispersed over the five floors of the Camera Obscura tower, we were invited to make notes of how we felt and to identify hot and cold spots. When I pressed the button of my infrared thermometer, it initially sprang to 666, then fluctuated between 10 and 19°C. Perhaps I was hallucinating.

  Matt from Newcastle was convinced that he saw orbs on the fourth floor, and insisted that there was a moving light in the operations room. Disappointingly, this turned out to be the reflection from some sunglasses one of the spirit guides was using as a headband. But Matt, in his twenties, remained unconvinced.

  Various items were set up to record displacement – iron filings, small building blocks, an object coated with flour. As we entered the deserted rooms of the Ragged School, Roberta Gordon, a medium, informed us that she could see a lady whom she felt must have been a past pupil who had returned there to teach. The name Mary sprang to her mind. Ewan Irvine picked up the sound of footsteps pacing the floor, readings from the Scriptures and children’s voices on the stair.

  ‘You know that sensation when you enter a room and it either feels right or wrong?’ he asked. ‘That’s what you have to ask yourself. The problem is that a large group like this inevitably disrupts the atmosphere.’

  It was now around 2 a.m. and the night air, despite our being indoors, had turned undeniably chilly. The exposed, uneven timbers beneath our feet were bare and covered with a thick dust. The rooms smelt of neglect. The team had set up video equipment to run throughout the night. It looked as though it was going to be a long vigil, and I therefore decided that I had seen enough. Excusing myself, I slipped out of a door and onto the empty, cobbled streets of the Royal Mile to head home.

  Time moves on regardless of what we as individuals can do about it. I have no doubt that the spirits of the Ragged School do exist and were, indeed, all about us watching us that night. But I somehow felt guilty for intruding on their silence.

  A report of the group’s findings appears on the Full Moon Investigations’ website (www.fullmooninvestigations.co.uk), but I am not convinced that such forays, while both entertaining and enjoyable, can ever offer convincing proof of the paranormal. Given a fundamental belief in parallel worlds, it is the unexpected, never the mundane, that fires the imagination.

  In the summer of 2008, I was on a visit to the Cowal Peninsula with my literary agent John Beaton and his wife Jane, and we had been invited to lunch with Jim and Mary Lamb, who live at Inverchaolain Manse. Among their other guests was their neighbour Bill Caffray, who has exercised his talents as a clairvoyant since childhood.

  Having for many years owned a restaurant in Andalucia, Bill returned to Scotland from Spain in 1977 and purchased the Ardfillan Hotel in Dunoon. A resplendent figure in a white suit, he told me how he had found himself rapidly filling a void, his powers of second sight being much in demand.

  One summons, for example, had been from Dunans Castle in Glendaruel, the former headquarters of the Fletcher Clan. The Fletchers had relocated from north of Bridge of Orchy as early as
1745, but in 1999, their dramatic Franco-baronial castle was sold to Robert and Ewa Lucas-Gardiner.

  The Lucas-Gardiners had already purchased the Manor of Marr, a feudal barony which entitled them to call themselves Lord and Lady Marr. Dunans Castle they transformed into a luxury hotel and once everything was up and running, Lady Marr had called upon Bill to conduct a seance for her.

  ‘I told her I could see her surrounded by people with shaven heads,’ he recalled in all sincerity. ‘I also warned her that I saw danger if she and her husband remained at the castle. Of course, that was the last thing either of them wanted to hear.’

  A few months after the seance a fire destroyed the first and second floors, forcing the Marrs and twelve other occupants to escape to safety in the early hours of a Sunday morning. The damage was considerable, but mercifully nobody was hurt.

  ‘I try to approach spiritual matters from a logical perspective,’ Bill reassured me. ‘But with the gift come responsibilities. Nobody can change fate. All of the decisions that affect us have been made long before we got here. I simply tell people what I see. I leave them to come to their own conclusions.’

  Mary Lamb, our hostess at Inverchaolain Manse, is Secretary of the Clan Lamont Society, and, after lunch, she took us to see Knockdow House, a mid-fifteenth-century mansion house which, until the late 1950s, had been owned by the Lamont family. The last of the Lamont line at Knockdow was Augusta, who inherited the estate from her unmarried brother Norman. It appears she was most definitely a woman of independent mind.

  Having inherited money from her grandmother, she had enrolled herself at Edinburgh University, subsequently becoming an eminent zoologist. Her father, known to be a bit of a tyrant, was horrified. A woman’s place was in the marital bed, he fumed. No doubt this was why Augusta remained a spinster for the rest of her life.